


Gates of Horn and Ivory

by SecretsTellNoLies



Series: Angel on my left, Devil on my right [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, BAMF!Harry, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff, Gen, Harry actually has love and care in his childhood, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Violence, because I need this ok, no seriously, the wizarding world is in trouble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-21 00:07:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretsTellNoLies/pseuds/SecretsTellNoLies
Summary: Where he is all dark, pale, shadow. She is light, vibrant, fire.But they are the same, in regards to the child.





	Gates of Horn and Ivory

**Author's Note:**

> NB: assumes canon blonde!petunia

And the dreamer will wake, and wonder why this dream seemed different. 

Neil Gaiman.

-

They lock the toddler in the second bedroom; bawling, hurting, confused. And leave him there. 

All of one, he is wholly clueless to the situation he finds himself in. Kept in the dark both metaphorically and literally. Within the capacity of his one year old mind, he wishes fervently for warmth and love and hugs and kisses. Of soothing voices and boisterous laughter. The seemingly carefree existence he was part of mere days ago.

In the dark of the room his wails echo.

All he wants, all he can want are his parents. Though he knows little of the sheer magnitude of significance he wants. Their warmth and love and magic. Hugs and kisses and smiles. He longs even as he forgets. As his memories are clouded beneath pain and fear. Eroded by the veil of time and the youngest of youth. 

The boy cries a lot, these days. 

And in his cries echo uncomprehending loss. In his rooms they echo forlorn.

Soon he barely remembers what they look like, their embraces or the sound of their voices. As the happy memories are replaced with darkness; of too light hair and too tight grips.

Everything is wrong but he is forgetting all that is right.

A week, two, the child remembers only the vaguest hints of what it is he so longs for. Down in his battered crib he lies, with the pain that is now a constant companion, with the hunger that is never quite sated and he dreams.

A dream weeks in the forging. Dreams that house his wants, even as they slip back into the shadows in waking hours. He dreams the same dream.

Dark hair and deep voice. Strong hands and loud laughter. Soothing whispers and secure hold. (A father who loved him enough to die for him.)

In his slumber so sound, his dream awakes.

With a glow on a jagged mark, with a longing for more than this cold, empty room. Slow and gentle it grows, a curious, creeping coil. Drawing from inside the child a life and power not all his own.

Reaching, searching, it finds. Not what the boy longs for but something...close enough; dark and amorphous. Separate-yet-linked, hovering near the boy as though unable to move further away or further inwards.

The Dream forms as such;

Dark hair, dark eyes, striking features. Pale skin, cunning sneer, confused brow tilt.

Small enough to be able to stand on the boys shoulder but not span the full length of his head. Intelligent and knowing of a lifetime yet unable to respond to both. He sits where he has formed - a scant few inches from the child - and endeavours to understand.

(His whisper of 'how are you alive child' lost to soft breathing.)

The culmination of days upon days upon nights upon a month of wanting, hoping, longing.

Is this being.

Though he knows not how or why. Rage seems a foreign concept. Protection far more prevalent. Though but a sliver he knows, is aware of what he is in conjunction with the child.

The child who is now his anchor. 

He can do naught but stare and try to comprehend his situation all in its entirety. The child sleeps fitfully on.

An hour brings no change and little comprehension. Two and the Dream is beginning to feel resigned to his fate. 

The next however, has the Dream stirring from his trance of counting the child's breaths.

The mark again. What caught, and captured his attention from the very first moment of notice. It shines with an essence most sacred, the same essence that has facilitated his own forming.

An essence of light and soul and magic.

(He will never forget the feeling, and how odd is it, that he can feel.)

The Dream watches as a woman is formed.

She is longing and wish and dream all mixed together. Yet, she is none of those.

Luminous, shining; a yellow-white body, fire-red hair and green, green eyes. Formed from and of and with fierce protection, deep sorrow and blazing anger.

(Where he is all dark, pale, shadow. She is light, vibrant, fire.

But they are the same in regards to the child.)

"My son." A lament, a promise, a claim, a threat, all warring together.

Too much and not enough in the Heart's words. Even as she strokes a radiant hand over sunken cheeks and puffy eyes.

The Dream almost sighs in exasperation. He shifts instead, her emitted radiance catching on wrists, neck and ankles. Bruises he harbours of a more permanent kind than the boys.

They are his marks of the essence from which they were both formed.

She strokes, then, over the mark. And the magic sings, fills her up with a blaze of power. Throbs at the places it has shackled him. It is their genesis, their purpose, their will and life. And he is bound as irrevocably as she.

He would be bound either way, the vessel that the child is to him does not allow otherwise.

As she turns to him, eyes uncomfortably alike Hers, he protests naught as she skims fingertips against the shimmering band just visible around his neck. 

Though her mouth is little more than a dark outline against the yellow-white of her face, her smile unsettles him. 

Perhaps it is because, in the end, he has placed it there.

The Heart dismisses him as the child stirs. Going over to settle down on his left, tucking herself to the pulse point thrumming in his neck. The Dream does sigh, in the end, and without much else to do settles himself on the child's right.

Harry Potter smiles for the first time since bright green took his whole world away.

**Author's Note:**

> I have nothing else written but have a multitude of ideas, I just wanted to post to see the reception and hopefully gain more motivation to tackle those ideas.
> 
> Please feel free to point out any mistakes.


End file.
